I recently read The Box[1] by Marc Levinson. It is an excellent read which explains how the container came to be - it's really fascinating to think that this ubiquitous thing was only invented about 50 years ago.

The book is very entertaining and informative, though it has a rather US-centric approach (being Danish, I obviously looked for when Maersk would be introduced, but they are barely mentioned). I especially enjoyed the explanations of how shipping worked before "the box." Dockworkers' unions were extremely powerful, to the extent of introducing ridiculous rules. E.g. "seven people must be assigned to each hatch on the ship, even if there is not enough for them to move there, and they are not allowed to help crews at other hatches." They went to extreme lengths to protect their jobs, and ultimately failed because they would not accept that they could not stop the container.

[1] http://smile.amazon.com/Box-Shipping-Container-Smaller-Econo...